


{...caged...}

by josephina_x



Series: The Triangle Guy [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: ...Or is he?, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Bill isn’t Bill, Depression, Gen, Identity Issues, One Year Later, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, See You Next Summer, Summer’s End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 10:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13187946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: A cage and a circle of confinement. Three Pines, and a triangle.





	{...caged...}

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: {...caged…}  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Summary: A cage and a circle of confinement. Three Pines, and a triangle.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: I probably shouldn’t be allowed to write these sorts of things anymore. (...probably? No, no, I take it back -- there’s no ‘probably’ about it.)

\---

“He’s really quiet,” Stan heard Dipper say. The kid sounded a little weirded out.

Stan could hardly bring himself to care. --Oh, no, wait, he couldn’t care, period. He felt like he was drifting in a grey fog, even though he was just hovering inside a small metal birdcage-looking thing with a chalk circle in the bottom of it.

There wasn’t actually any fog in the air; he could see perfectly fine everything around him. Crystal clear. It wasn’t his vision that was an issue; he didn’t even need glasses anymore.

It was his mind that was the problem.

“Why didn’t he even put up a fight?” Dipper added, as Stan floated along. --Was towed along. Inside the triangle-cage, which Sixer was holding.

Sixer was walking along, with all the fingers of one of his six-fingered hands curled around a ring that was attached to the top of the birdcage-meant-for-a-triangle. It had a chalk-marked circle in the bottom of it that was somehow keeping Stan’s floating triangular self centered in the middle of it, and Stan wasn’t just feeling like he was drifting in a grey fog anymore -- he felt like he _was_ the fog.

Dull. Grey. Lifeless. _Useless._ Unwanted.

(...If he wasn’t wanted though, then why had Sixer grabbed him and put him in a cage? Wouldn’t he have just left him behind, discarded and used up?)

“He may be having memory issues,” he heard Sixer offer up to the kid, but he could practically feel Sixer’s gaze resting on him as he said it, and the words felt like a _lie_ when the vibrations in the air waves passed across his form, like a dirty caress almost.

Stan tentatively blinked his eye. He tried, and failed, to care.

...Because why wouldn’t Sixer lie? He could do what he wanted. He’d never needed Stan. Never. He could’ve gone on that trip without him, searching for anomalies. Could’ve taken Glasses with him, instead.

(...Why hadn’t Sixer done _that?_ )

“I don’t think I should show him my scrapbook, Grunkle Ford,” he heard Mabel said uneasily.

Stan hovered where he was, and let the cage center him. He let his eye slowly drift closed.

He didn’t feel well. He didn’t feel like much of anything.

He wasn’t anything at all, really. Just useless.

...Yes, that’s right. He’d almost forgotten. Memory issues, oh yeah. Somehow, he’d forgotten that, at the end of the day. --He was useless.

He was useless. Useless, screw-up Stanley Pines. He’d died.

He’d died, but he hadn’t stayed dead.

He should have stayed dead.

He hadn’t even been able to do _that_ right.

Stan drifted in a grey fog. He was the fog.

And nobody really much cared.

Least of all him.

\---


End file.
